January 27, 2004

When I was 19, I remember seeing a bunch of guys in a parking lot in New Jersey absolutely rocking out to Twisted Sister at top volume, “Oh we’re not gonna take it, No, we ain’t gonna take it, Oh we’re not gonna take it anymo-o-o-o-ore” and I remember thinking the song was using up the energy that would otherwise go into rebellion.

Just rocking out to Twisted Sister so hard, and feeling so good about it, made those guys feel like they’d already stood up to The Man, making it less likely that they would actually do so in the real world, when the time came. And I’m wondering if the Dean campaign has been singing a version of that song, or, rather, I’m wondering if the bottom-up tools they’ve been using have been helping their supporters sing that song to each other.

I've wondered the same thing about the hip-hop the vote movement. It's time to show and prove!

January 25, 2004

Hey there. My name is Shira and I enjoy making films. I have created this here site for my "production company," Third Rail Films. This company consists of me, my Canon GL2, a 17" iMac with Final Cut Pro and an unruly band of friends and loved ones who are willing to participate in my filmmaking shenanigans.

A more ethnically, economically and commercially diverse crew would be hard to assemble, even in New York City. Within the three-block chunk imagined for demolition, there are artists and auto body shops, a world-famous violin builder, a cherished neighborhood bar and a small company that makes hats for church ladies.

Meanwhile, Mary Markowitz calls the opportunity "exciting ... It Brings Brooklyn back to the big leagues." Ah, excuse me, wasn't Brooklyn already the country's 4th largest city? That's fairly big league. My predictably "urbanist" response should be anti-stadium, but I'm torn. Obviously, I'm not in favor of tearing down brownstones, and like William Rhoden, I don't think this has anything to do with nostalgia and the Dodgers. I am the most nostalgic person you know (or don't know), and my Dad grew up a Dodgers fan in the Bronx. They left Brooklyn just as he was getting old enough to go to games by himself, so not even Jay-Z's Brooklyn Nets would begin to heal that wound. (Moving the Mets to Sunset Park, on the other hand....)

But I'm excited at the prospect of living so close to what might be Gehry's crowning achievement as an architect, and the end result would be not only a new stadium, but the eyesore that is the Long Island Railroad yards partially transformed into public park space and 4,500 new apartments. I'd love for a left-leaning think tank to study the effects that 4 new apartment towers right on top of the Times Square of Brooklyn (there, I said it) would have on gentrification of the outlying neighborhoods. If the new living space lets some of the older and further out neighborhoods retain their identity, are't three blocks in Prospect Heights a price we should consider paying? Of course, I don't know anything about this, and there's an equal chance that these new developments could accelerate gentrification, or cause a dramatic depreciation in property values in Prospect Heights, Fort Green and Park Slope which would set Brooklyn's economic resurgence back 15 years. That's why there should be a study.

January 21, 2004

"I've said from the beginning that memorials really should be things that look to the future, as opposed to just looking back," Bloomberg said. "You want to tell a story of what happened. You want to explain why it happened. And you want to give people reason to make sure it doesn't happen again."

January 16, 2004

We've got a new copier here in New York City, and it's great. It produces crisp text, staples and collates. Today, however there was a paper jam. After removing the paper that was clearly jammed we were confronted with these two flashing (<blink>ing?) diagrams:

After checking around the innards of the copier some more, Shira slammed the door and I pressed Program, Program, Clear, Clear, Program, Clear. That worked. Yet another application of video game skills throughout the work day.

Fans who love the classic Popeye clips from the 1930s and '40s haven't been able to see them for decades because of a squabble over rights that has left the sailor man the only major cartoon star who doesn't have his classic films available on video.

Popeye fan club head Fred Grandinetti says he is heartbroken when mothers come to him asking where they can find the films for their kids, and he thinks its time that Time Warner and King Features end their dispute over distribution.

This reminds me of the game of tetris played a few years ago on the Brown campus. If Tetris had been written today, instead of 20 years ago, I'm not sure this project would have even been allowed to go forward for fear of lawsuit.

"It will be a savage, hysterically funny sendup of American pop culture, covering everything from fast food to gay and straight politics to music to television movie trailers to Americans' addiction to the Internet," said Belzer, who plays Detective Munch on the hit NBC series.

January 15, 2004

With Zelda, Miyamoto wanted to take the idea of a game "world" even further. In his own words, the intent of the original Zelda game (and every Zelda title since) was to give players a "miniature garden that they can put inside their drawer." His inspiration came from the fields, woods, and caves outside Kyoto that he had explored as a boy, and he has always tried to impart this sense of exploration and limitless wonder to players through his Zelda titles.

Update (1/16):
I've been thinking a lot (as my 6 loyal readers know) about my sudden obsession with video games, and this quote from Matt Haughey, featured @ under the iron, hit a nerve:

I was talking to someone that works in video game development the other day — telling him that I feel terrible playing console games and haven’t touched one since the first Playstation. You sit down and spend two hours slaying a dragon or winning the race and at the end you have nothing to show for it and I hate that. He said that most people don’t have any desire to create and they just want to consume and the video game business is really healthy because of it. I don’t know if I’m wired different or what, but deep down, I really like to make things be they real or virtual.

When I was little I spent a lot of time playing video games, and then as I started programming I stopped. Recently I've found that nintendo's games offer a nice balance of community interaction and problem solving, and a lot of the adventures (especially Zelda: The Wind Waker) offer as much stimulation as seeing a movie or a Law & Order rerun. Also, the incremental satisfaction of passing a level or solving a puzzle tends to refuel my creative urge, which is often sucked dry by my time in front of the computer.

It’s sad really, I work at home and might spend 8-10 hours doing work stuff, and the first thing I want to do with my free time is more web stuff (either personal projects I’m already doing or new ones), so many days I’m staring at a monitor 16+ hours a day.

Welcome!

You've reached the personal blog of David Jacobs. I live in New York City, and I'm eating two hamburgers a week on doctor's orders. When you're done with the front page, you can read the archives.
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